even, effe, ff (Or: Dutch class 12 by ROC Mondriaan)

Two days ago Wednesday was the 12th class by ROC Mondriaan. I must admit that that is another example of something that is simpler to say in Dutch – eergisteren means ‘the day before yesterday’ and overmorgen means ‘the day after tomorrow’. Just like the movie…

Anyway, one random thing we learned on Wednesday was the difference between even, effe, en ff.

Even = (a-ven, with a hard a) is hard to translate at times. It’s generally used to make commands or statements softer/politer. And probably other usages I don’t know yet. It’s harder for non-Dutchies to grasp.

Effe = street version of the same word. Pronounced f-fa (short a).

ff = even shorter version used for texting. Yep, they abbreviate a four letter word into a two letter word. (And English is just as guilty of that.)

We had another writing exercise. This time about the sports that we like or don’t like, and whether we participate in sports as well. (I like to watch sports on tv. But I definitely don’t participate in any.)

Amusingly this chapter was called media en comunicatie (media and communication) and the chapter opened with a brief story from a librarian. Because of my background in libraries, the teacher asked me to talk a little bit about libraries in general and also read the brief story. I did pretty well with the pronunciation – luckily there were not too many annoying words in the text.

We found out that we have a test for synonyms on Wednesday. Couple that with the test on Monday and I suddenly have something to study for. Should be fun… But it is getting a bit more interesting now, as we get random information that isn’t found in the textbook itself. So it is going well.